The Meta

London opens up Oyster role

Londoners will be able to use a single smartcard for travelling and making contactless payments for low-value items as early as this summer, Computing can reveal.

New Oyster cards will be issued as a result of a deal between Barclaycard, Visa and Transport for London (TfL) signed last month.

Successful testing trials of the card have been conducted with between 60 and 80 Barclaycard staff who used the card to travel and to pay for items in the firm’s cafeteria by waving it over a reader.

Speaking exclusively to Computing, Barclaycard’s contactless programme manager Simon Chick says the trial will be extended in March to more than 2,000 staff at Barclaycard, TfL and TranSys, the IT consortium that delivers Oyster, before being made available to the public later this year.

‘We are applying the same principles we used when introducing Oyster initially – a phased rollout to ensure people understood the technology,’ he said. ‘This will eventually put Oyster into the hands of more people.’